Post navigation

Isabelle Arsenault is an internationally renowned children’s book illustrator whose work has won many awards and much praise from critics. Her books include the graphic novels Jane, the Fox and Me and Louis Undercover by Fanny Britt, Spork and Virginia Wolf by Kyo Maclear, Once upon a Northern Night by Jean E. Pendziwol, Cloth Lullaby by Amy Novesky (Bologna Ragazzi Award 2017) and Colette’s Lost Pet, which marks her debut as an author. She has won the prestigious Governor General’s Award for Children’s Literature three times, and two of her picture books were named as New York Times Best Illustrated Books of the Year. The poetry expressed through Isabelle Arsenault’s graphic universe, the gentle flow of her lines and the overall charm of her books have made her one of Quebec’s best-known and esteemed illustrators. For more about Isabelle and her work, see http://www.isabellearsenault.com/

isabellearsenault.com Artwork from Virginia Wolf.

Interview with Isabelle Arsenault, as GG Winner in 2012.

From the Walrus (Nov. 2012), here is a condensed form of Farida Hussain’s interview with Isabelle Arsenault, when her artwork for Virginia Wolf, with text by Kyo Maclear, won her the Governor General’s Literary Award, for children’s literature (illustration) in English.

In 2004, Arsenault won a GG for Le Coeur de Monsieur Gauguin, with text by Marie-Danielle Croteau, her first children’s book in French. In 2013, she won the GG again, for Jane, the Fox and Me, by Fanny Britt.

Arsenault studied Graphic Design at the Université du Québec à Montréal. She lives and works in Montreal.

Thank you to everyone who took the time and made the effort to participate in the voting process for the 2017 Information Book Award. The award will be presented at our celebration event on January 16, 2018.

WinnerThe Tragic Tale of the Great AukBy Jan Thornhill.
Published by Groundwood.

THE 2017 INFORMATION BOOK AWARD HONOUR BOOK:

Adrift at Sea: A Vietnamese Boy’s Story of SurvivalBy Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch with Tuan Ho
Art by Brian Deines.
Published by Pajama Press.

The jury for the Children’s Literature Roundtables of Canada’s Information Book Award are pleased to announce the 2017 Shortlist, appended and attached below.

Voting, by members of the Children’s Literature Roundtables across Canada has begun and will continue through October 31, 2017. The 2017 Information Book Award winner and honour titles will be announced in early November 2017, and the award will be presented in January 2018, in Vancouver.

Our thanks to all Canadian publishers of information books for children for participating in this award.

Sad news for the MACL community: Lois Brymer, Master of Arts in Children’s Literature alumna, and former Chair of the Information Book Award, died on Monday, March 27th.

Lois was a gracious and vibrant member of the MACL and Vancouver Children’s Literature Roundtable communities. She was a journalist and member of the Pandora’s Vox choir. She studied in the MACL Program from 2000 to 2005. Her thesis, ”A Content Analysis of ‘What is Canadian’ in a Collection of Rare and Historical Canadian Children’s Books 1799-1939 in the University of British Columbia’s Rare and Special Collections Library” was supervised by Professor Ann Curry, with Professors Jane Flick and Judi Saltman as committee members, examined Canadian identity in historical children’s books.

After graduation, Lois worked tirelessly on behalf of Canadian children’s literature. She chaired the Children’s Literature Roundtables of Canada’s Information Book Award for many years.

A service will be held Tuesday afternoon, April 11, at West Vancouver Baptist Church at 450 Mathers Ave, West Vancouver.

Some VCLR folk will remember our Mem Fox event at the Hyatt Regency Ballroom quite a few years ago. Mem was a fabulous and friendly guest for all. Vibrant and wonderful.Her website features her new book on multiculturalism in Australia– mentioned in the articles below.

AUSTRALIA’S best-loved children’s author, Mem Fox, was left sobbing and shaken after being detained for two hours and aggressively interrogated by immigration officials at Los Angeles airport.

Fox says she’s unlikely to ever travel to the United States again after being made to feel like “a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay”.

President Donald Trump had created the climate for this sort of behaviour, she said, adding: “This is what happens when extremists take power.”

En route to Milwaukee for a conference on February 9, where she was to deliver the opening keynote address at a literacy conference, Fox was ushered into an airport holding room and told she was travelling on the wrong visa. This was incorrect and the US Embassy in Canberra has since apologised. Fox, 70, said that by the time she checked in to her hotel she was shaking and sobbing.

“I am old and white, innocent and educated, and I speak English fluently,”she said. “Imagine what happened to the others in the room, including an old Iranian woman in her 80s, in a wheelchair.

“The way I was treated would have made any decent American shocked to the core, because that’s not America as a whole, it really isn’t. It’s just that people have been given permission to let rip in a fashion that is alarming.”

The irony that the two most popular of her more than 25 books published in the US,* Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes* and *Whoever You Are*, are both about diversity, was not lost on her. Nor was the fact that the theme of the conference she was attending was inclusivity and diversity.

Fox has visited the US more than 100 times since 1985, and is widely known there as an author and literacy educator.

After returning to Adelaide, she made a complaint to the US Embassy in Canberra, and received an emailed apology. An embassy spokeswoman told *The Advertiser *consular cases were not discussed with the media for privacy reasons.

Her experience has confirmed in Fox the importance of her new book, *I’m Australian Too*, about multiculturalism, illustrated by an Indian-born Australian, Ronojoy Ghosh. Fox wrote the book in late 2014 in response to what she saw as a rising tide of antagonism towards immigrants and refugees. “And it’s got worse since then,” she said. “I just feel that the hate speech that is going on is trying to change that aspect of our national character and it would be heartbreaking if that happened.

Serendipity 2017 looks to the stages of development between childhood and teenage years, from the humorous antics of Jeremy Tankard’s Grumpy Bird to Jennifer A. Nielsen’s exploration of a young girl finding her family divided overnight by the sudden rise of the Berlin Wall in A Night Divided, and Martha Brockenbrough’s Game of Love and Death, a tale of destiny and personal choice throughout various times and places. The work of these three phenomenal artists, from picture books to nonfiction to historical novels, will make you laugh, cry, and think about humanity in surprising ways.

Murray Elliott Award for Outstanding Service to Teacher Education in the Faculty of Education

Jo-Anne Naslund is the 2016 recipient of the Murray Elliott Service Award for Outstanding Service to the Teacher Education Program. Jo-Anne’s many contributions to Teacher Education at UBC are characterized by her passion and commitment to supporting every teacher candidate in developing an understanding of the resources available to help them in their journey toward becoming an exemplary educator. Jo-Anne’s practice is based on the needs of teacher candidates in the 21st century: she both embraces technology and finds ways to provide teacher candidates with the support they need to integrate technology into their practice. An exemplary librarian and teacher-librarian, Jo-Anne provides leadership by working closely with instructors and their students to keep abreast of new curricular and pedagogical developments. She mobilizes community resources, acts as an ambassador at various off-campus events, and is unfailingly helpful to all who seek her assistance. She is also to be commended for her commitment to showcasing literary events, Canadian authors and multiple resources to support learning.